She’s lying on her bed like Jesus on the cross.
Her eyes are closed tight against the spring light and beneath her lids she watches her own kaleidoscope unfold. Patterns of gold, green and red rush, expand and collapse — a whole universe inside. Winona stays there, counting breaths. Her therapist says meditation is a good way to calm her anxious thoughts, to slow down moments to manageable chunks. It’s never worked for her before; her thoughts circle and find new places to nest. Even the meds don’t help. They just numb her out, make her soft and sad, make her insides dark and deep like an ocean. Sometimes she can swim inside herself and other times she floats around killing time, but eventually the panic swirls and pulls her under. It’s moments like those that make her want to cut, to feel something — anything. She exhales again and tries to empty her thoughts. She’s listening to ambient music, but the tones and bells don’t drown out the sound of the twins playing in the other room so she grabs her headphones and clamps them over her ears, turns on the noise canceling until even her own breath goes seashell quiet. She imagines herself sitting in the pink inner tube, floating circles in their pool the way they did that last summer when everything was still good. The sky was so blue, the kind of blue there isn’t a name for, the kind that makes you want to skywrite declarations of love. She did love him and now she thinks that he’ll never know. As the song fades into the next, she hears her stepmother’s muffled voice and opens her eyes.
“What the hell, Winona?” Trish is leaning over her, arms crossed. She’d look pissed if it wasn’t for the Botox that gives her an always-surprised face.
Winona takes off her headphones and sits up. “What?”
“The school called,” she says, pausing. “About you missing classes again?”
“So? Everyone skips. It’s not a big deal.”
“Well, I guess it is a big deal because they asked us to come in.”
“Us?”
“I called your father and he’s on his way.”
“Thanks a lot,” Winona says.
“Look, I’m sorry, I did try but I can’t keep covering for you.”
“Whatever.” Winona puts her headphones back on.
Trish yanks them off. “Come on, get yourself together. He wants you to go with him.” Trish pats Winona on the leg twice as if she’s a horse needing a giddy-up.
“Why.” She says it like a statement and then reluctantly gets up to shut the door behind Trish. She checks her look in the mirror and smooths out her bedhead. She’s more pale and gaunt than usual, her eyes red from staying up late — ’90s heroin chic. She turns away from the mirror and pulls off her T-shirt. She doesn’t mind seeing her face but avoids the rest of herself. She knows her deficiencies by heart. The visual assault of small breasts; her no thigh gap; her disproportionate hip, waist, bust ratio; her silhouette — a beaker rather than an hourglass. She slips on a fresh white tee and turns back around, pulls her hair into a high pony and wears her glasses for a studious effect.
Downstairs, the twins rally, five-year-old voices chirping, “Daddy, Daddy.”
From the stairs, Winona watches him hoist them up the same way he used to gather her in his arms when she was little.
“Jon!” Trish rushes over to greet him as if she’s a ’50s housewife. To Winona, Trish is a try-hard in every way. She tracks her steps, her sleep, her calories; her entire life is flattened into fifteen-minute intervals and scheduled onto a sticker-laden family calendar. She’s a part-time yoga instructor, she’s a book club member, she’s a classroom mom and she cleans the house before the Clean and Tidy maids come by every Tuesday — only she’d never call them maids, she’d never call things what they are. As far as Winona’s concerned, she’s alright in every basic boring way except that her very presence is a reminder that her own mother is dead.
Winona leans over the banister. “This is such bullshit. Everyone ditches.”
Jon hands the twins off to Trish. “Well, you’re not everyone. You have a history. Grab your coat.”
Winona follows her father out to his car. She connects her phone and streams David Bowie extra loud to deter whatever car lecture he has planned.
Jon taps the beat on the steering wheel. “Did I ever tell you that this was the song your mom and I danced to at our high school grad?”
“Like, only a hundred times,” she says and turns it up even louder to drown him out. He can’t carry a tune the way her mother could and he doesn’t tell the story the way she did. She danced with him because she felt sorry for him. He was standing by the exit sign the entire night. “That’s what we do as women,” she once told Winona after having had one too many glasses of wine. “We rescue men from themselves and let them believe that they are the heroes in the story.”
Jon pulls up to the school, parks in a reserved spot and reminds Winona to let him do the talking. She follows him into the office where the principal and guidance counselor are waiting.
“I’m Jonathan Winter, Winona’s father. Call me Jon.”
“Yes, of course, we’ve met before,” Principal Carter says, shaking his hand, pumping one too many times. “This is Sheryl Kind, our school counselor.”
“Ms. Kind or is it Mrs.? What a perfect name to have in your role,” Jon says, disarming her with his smile.
“Sheryl, please.” She’s flustered the way women get around him.
Winona snickers.
“Well, you all know my daughter already,” he says looking over at Winona.
She flashes a pretend smile. There’s an awkward moment where everyone is just staring at each other, waiting.
“So.” Jon sits down without being asked, and the rest follow suit. “What’s all this about?”
“Yes, right to it.” Principal Carter smooths his tie as he collects his thoughts. “We’re concerned because we haven’t seen Winona at school much since the unfortunate incident.”
“The incident?”
“Yes, with Jacob McAlister,” Sheryl says.
“Oh, I see,” Jon says. “And you’re concerned because?”
“Well, they were friends, and given some of Winona’s challenges in the past, we were obviously worried.” He looks to Winona, clearing an opening for her.
“I’m fine. I just didn’t feel like being at school. It’s depressing.” She watches her father’s blank expression, the way he nods; she knows his half-day parenting seminar on mental well-being did not prepare him for variables, did not give him the compassion to go off-script, and she takes his discomfort as a personal victory.
“You know we have counselors available,” Mrs. Kind says.
“Winona has all the support she needs,” Jon says.
“Yes, it’s just that leading up to the — incident, the art teacher had expressed some concern about Winona’s final project.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t follow,” Jon says.
“Mr. Winter, have you seen the art installation?”
“No, I can’t say that I have.”
She nods as if something has been made clear. “It might make more sense if you see it for yourself. Shall we?”
Winona follows them down the corridor. She watches as her father peeks into open doors as he passes; he’s never been to parent-teacher nights. That was her mother’s job, and after Lara died he ignored the school notices and teachers’ requests to meet until they called him to tell him that Winona was in the hospital.
By the time he got there, her stomach had been pumped and she was sitting up in her bed, staring out the window. Sobbing, he rushed to her bedside where both of them muttered tear-soaked apologies and made promises that things would get better, promises neither could keep. She stayed at the hospital for a few weeks before she was released to outpatient care. He went to family therapy with her and, after each session, resolved to be a better father. Things got better for a few weeks. She stopped cutting. She started eating. Then it all went back to the way it had been, playing out over and over in its sameness like a video clip cycling back a few frames at a time.
“Here it is.” Mrs. Kind points toward the back of the room.
Winona watches Jon stare at the installation, taking in the scope of its floor-to-ceiling dimensions. He steps closer and examines the layers of feathers, tissue paper and twigs that are fashioned together. Coins, newsprint, bottle caps, all chaotic and purposeless up close. He adjusts his perspective, moving around the installation — the image comes through best from a distance.
“It’s a 3D portrait of Jacob McAlister’s face,” says Mrs. Kind, “but as you can see, the image itself is made up of thousands of small objects. It’s really something. Your daughter is very talented.”
“She gets it from her mother. She was an artist . . . a painter.” He takes a closer look at the canvas and then backs up again to see it in its entirety. “Up close, it looks like nothing but random junk, but from further back — the face. Remarkable.” He pauses for a second and without looking at Winona asks, “What inspired you to do this?”
Winona shrugs. “I don’t know.” If she tells him about the chaos of her mind, the things it holds onto, junk and meaning, beauty and hate, how all of it makes her who she is and how her perspective is both lost and found in the accumulation, he would only worry for her. Jay was the only one who truly understood.
“If you look closely, there’s a repeated use of small plastic blue whales and broken doll parts to build up the eyes,” Mrs. Kind points out.
“Yes, I see that,” he says, reaching out to touch the plastic whales. “But I’m afraid I don’t understand why you brought me here. Why the concern?”
“Well, obviously we are worried about her well-being, given her close friendship with Jacob, his recent passing and this,” she says, pointing to the installation. “In some ways, it’s unsettling.”
“My late wife, if she were here, would tell you that art is meant to unsettle.”
“Of course,” Principal Carter says.
Jon, seeming to have forgotten the principal was even there, turns toward him. “So your point being?”
“We just want to make sure that Winona is alright and that you were fully aware of their friendship.”
“Thank you for your concern. But Winona is fine. Aren’t you, Winona?”
She nods.
“Good then. I think we’re about done.”
“There is one other thing,” Mrs. Kind says. “The use of the blue whale motif.”
“What of it?”
“Well, ‘blue whale’ is associated with an online game that’s been linked to numerous deaths.”
“What kind of game?”
“Perhaps we should speak alone? Maybe, Winona, you could wait outside.”
Before Winona moves, Jon tells her to stay. “Please just say what you need to say.”
“I really don’t think —”
“What game?” he asks, his voice slightly raised.
“It’s an alleged suicide game. Teens are lured into completing tasks over the course of several weeks, the final task being . . . a filmed suicide.”
“Alleged,” Jon says, in the same tone Winona’s heard him use when he’s preparing for a trial.
Principal Carter steps forward. “Yes, nothing official here, but dozens of teen suicides are linked to it overseas.”
“And you think my daughter is somehow involved in this alleged game because she used tiny plastic whale figurines to make the blue of an eye . . .”
“Well, given her history and recent events. We thought it best to be cautious.”
“The installation is distressing, I’ll give you that. But your assertion is alarmist and unappreciated.”
“Mr. Winters, we certainly didn’t mean —” Principal Carter stops short.
“Didn’t mean what?”
“To offend you.”
“Well, you have. A boy is dead and to suggest that my daughter had something to do with it or has some knowledge of it just because she’s had her own mental health challenges is preposterous.” He opens the art room door and stands with his hands on hips as if he’s in a standoff. “Winona, let’s go. We’re done here.”
He doesn’t say anything to her until they’re in the car, doors locked. “What the hell is blue whale?”
She’s chewing gum, snapping small bubbles. “It’s a marine mammal and the largest animal to have ever existed on Earth.”
“Don’t be smart. I know what it is. You heard what they said in there, so what I’m asking you is is it anything else?”
“No. They’re just being assholes. “ She pulls her sweatshirt sleeves over her wrists so he doesn’t finally notice her whale tattoo. She glances at him. He’s got that look in his eyes that he used at therapy, his attempt at patience.
“And this boy, Jacob? You’ve never mentioned him before.”
“He was just a friend,” she says.
“Be straight with me. Is there anything I need to know, Winona?”
She stares out the window, thinking of all the things he should know, all of the things he should have known, like how he should never have married Trish, how starting a new family was a betrayal to everything that ever mattered to her. But she doesn’t say anything and presses her head against the window.
Trish rushes to the door when they get home. “Everything okay?” Her question upturns in a way that shows her age.
Jon kisses her as he steps inside. “It’s fine. They’re just being cautious since the thing with that boy Jacob. Maybe a bit too vigilant but . . .” He doesn’t have a chance to finish his thought.
“You know, Jen at the studio said that she heard he jumped off the Lions Gate Bridge in the middle of the day. I bet he was high or something, I hear he was a real messed-up kid.”
Winona gives her a murderous look before running up the stairs to her room, where she sits cross-legged on the bed, opening her laptop to Jay’s Facebook page.
Rest in peace Jay
You were the best
I hope you find some peace RIP
She reads the posts, mouthing the words, but doesn’t like or comment. She scrolls through his pictures and saves each one, keeping what she can before life takes him from her in pieces, the way it took her mother. She was only nine when her mother died, and now she barely remembers the sound of her voice. But what she can’t forget is how her mother looked in the hospital, her bald head and gaunt face, a dainty but somewhat pained smile and big blue oval eyes just like her porcelain dolls’. Winona threw them all away after her mother died.
The most recent post is from a girl Winona doesn’t recognize:
For any of you struggling, reach out, I will be there for you.
Winona’s thinking of all of the things she wants to say to all of the randoms posting: They didn’t know Jay. They won’t remember him. Tomorrow they’ll be Snapchatting their filtered faces and #IWokeUpLikeThis vanity posts and they’ll forget. But not her. She can’t forget.